Summary

This book brings together empirical studies from around the world to help readers gain a better understanding of multilinguals, ranging from small children to elderly people, and their lives. The chapters focus on the multilingual subjects’ identities and the ways in which they are discursively and/or visually constructed, and are split into sections looking specifically at the multilingual self, the multilingual learner and multilingual teacher education. The studies draw on rich visual data, which is analysed for content and/or form and often complemented with other types of data, to investigate how multilinguals make sense of their use and knowledge of more than one language in their specific context. The topic of multilingualism is addressed as subjectively experienced and the book unites the current multilingual, narrative and visual turns in Applied Language Studies. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in the areas of language learning and teaching, teacher education and bi/multilingualism, as well as to those interested in using visual methods and narratives as a means of academic research.

Review:

Narrative turns and visual turns. This book will have your head spinning. Filled with innovative methods for studying the multilingual subject that are cutting-edge but intersect with more conventional methods too, this stunning collection looks to the future in applied language studies research.

- Gary Barkhuizen, University of Auckland, New Zealand

A path-breaking book for multilingual classrooms in the 21st century! The 15 chapters, expertly edited by Kalaja and Melo-Pfeifer, offer cutting-edge research on multilingual subjects and a range of truly innovative pedagogies for teachers. This book will inspire researchers investigating the role of visual literacies in multilingual education and will transform the experience of teachers committed to a deeper understanding of the multilingual lives of newcomer students and multilingual learners worldwide. This volume is bound to become a major reference in the fields of language education and teacher education.

- Christine Hélot, University of Strasbourg, France

Author Biography:

Paula Kalaja is Professor Emerita in the Department of Language and Communication Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests lie in visual methodologies and foreign language learning and teaching, with a particular interest in beliefs, motivation and identities. She has published widely in the field and is co-author (with Ana Maria F. Barcelos, Mari Aro and Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty) of Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching (Palgrave, 2016).

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer is Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is also a member of CIDTFF (Research Centre ‘Didactics and Technology in Education of Trainers’) at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Her research interests include plurilingual and intercultural (online) interaction, pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures, and heritage language education.